Hot Topics:

Lifestyles

Massage sounds like a treat, but it's a crucial part of training

By The Denver Post

Posted:
06/11/2013 12:01:00 AM MDT

The rooms at Elevated Health Massage are relaxing and quiet. (Shawn Snyder, The Denver Post)

"It's a little like an Easter egg hunt," says Cristy Rutledge, but to me it feels more like she's digging around for something in my stomach through my armpit at the moment. But then when she stops, something miraculous happens: The excrutiating back pain I've been experiencing for weeks has finally stopped.

Rutledge laughs when I tell her this, because over her nearly 10 years as a massage therapist, she has had clients mistakenly imagine that she's poking around in their kidneys or some other such nonsense.

"Are you kidding me?" she laughs in her gentle drawl, a remnant of her native Georgia. "I know where people's kidneys are. I'm not anywhere near them when I'm doing this stuff. But I get it that most people have no idea where their organs or even their major muscle groups are located."

If more people knew where their body parts were and how to take care of them, they might not need Rutledge so much, but for right now, all I care about is that she knows where everything is and how to make it feel better.

Before I foolishly started training for both a marathon and a bike race this spring, I looked at massages as an indulgence, for years getting them every few months, and then once a month when I started working out more regularly. I always went for deep-tissue rather than a Swedish-style or anything most folks would consider to be "pampering" or relaxing — as someone who plays hard, I definitely wanted my rubs to be "hard" as well, aiming to at least push out some of the toxins and get things moving around again.

Advertisement

But that was all before I really started to hurt, and before I had developed a case of sciatica, a nerve compression in my lower back. Training has a way of wreaking havoc on your body, and when you add in strength training, which ultimately helps during an event by making you less tired, you put more stress on your muscles. My trainer told me I needed to think about getting regular work done, and he recommended Rutledge, co-founder of Elevated Health Massage ( elevatedhealthmassage.com).

Good call. Not only is she talented and strong, she's also proficient at explaining how and why your nerves and muscles get so messed up — she specialized in neuromuscular therapy when she became a certified massage therapist, which is a methodology that focuses more on preventing soft-tissue damage and chronic pain management.

"Your nerves pass through your muscles, and all of it is wrapped up in what's called 'fascia,' which helps it keep its shape and form," she says. "When you work out or stress this, it gets sticky. It's kind of like spaghetti, when you cook it and it bands together."

When it's all stuck together like that, Rutledge explains, you can have what's called "referred pain," issues like sciatica, where the nerve endings that are trapped send out signals down your leg, for instance, or from your neck to your shoulder or elbow.

What massage can do in this case is unstick the fascia. Often called "myofascial release," this kind of massage finds the therapist stretching and gently nudging at the tissue to loosen it. At the time, this can be kind of painful — OK, the truth is, sometimes it's downright awful — and I can't stress enough that you need to find someone qualified to do this. And things like sciatica may be something more serious, so you should see your doctor if you have an injury.

Also, it might sound like a weekly massage is the ultimate indulgence, but what became clear pretty quickly is that it's like regular car maintenance — the more you do it, the less you have to have done each time. For example, the first time I saw her, Rutledge had to spend so much of the session on my back and shoulders, she couldn't do anything else. By the next session, I had run so many miles and screwed up my hip so badly, there went that time.

Not to mention that I was compounding the problems by hunching over a computer for hours after training — a mistake Rutledge talked me out of by insisting that I set a timer to make me get up and move around periodically.

As the weeks have gone by, I've found that after my massage, I'm able to train more efficiently — I'm looser and stronger, and I just feel better overall. Not more relaxed in the way I've normally associated with massages, but more at ease.

And, of course, I know when I get sore again, I have my next session with Rutledge to look forward to.

Rockies relief pitcher John Axford, who hasn't pitched for the team since last Wednesday, was forced to leave spring training camp after his 2-year-old son was bit by a rattlesnake twice in his right foot.

One-day event to run slide down University HillIt's not quite the alternative mode of transportation that Boulder's used to, but, for one day this summer, residents will be able to traverse several city blocks atop inflatable tubes.

DETROIT (AP) — In a story March 27 about a 'Little Syria' exhibit going to Ellis Island, The Associated Press, due to incorrect information from the Arab American National Museum, erroneously reported the date the exhibit will open. Full Story